Posted on: 21 January 2025 Posted by: Alex Mennie Comments: 0
Photo: sonder3 | Flickr (licensed under CC)

Photo: sonder3 | Flickr (licensed under CC)

Ewan had stepped onto the wooden platform just as Willie stepped off it. The sudden weight shift had made him catch his breath. The metal chains clanked and the whole structure swayed around him. Even after all these years, these movements mattered. You couldn’t get complacent. Not here. Willie moved round to the north side. He wiped his brow and exhaled, dipped his paintbrush into the bucket and looked up to the horizon.   
  
“Well, it’s a fine view the day, right enough” he called out.   
  
Ewan opened his mouth to agree but was drowned out by a crack like a revolver shot as the entire world around him vibrated. He reached out to feel the cold steel with his left hand and looked south towards the city. A train crept past him – through him – but two hundred feet below him. Plumes of steam, coal smoke and the oily grit of the locomotive mixed with the crisp sea salt air that carried the faintest touch of mackerel from the smokeries of the Fife shore.   
  
Willie swore and looked down, well down. Was it three hundred feet? Three-fifty down to the swirl of the water? Not that you could see it today, mind. The haar was in below the men, wrapping the tubular pillars and intricate latticework in a wispy white smirr.   
  
“What’s that?” called Ewan.   
  
“I said it’s one for Jim now” came the reply. “Or the fishes. Another brush gone. Fuckssake.”   
  
Ewan laughed, “Aye well, Mr Lancaster will have plenty more, nae worries. Seems like a good time for a tea break though”.   
  
His partner agreed and the two sat down in unison – a learnt manoeuvre that minimised the seesaw swing of their scaffold platform. Willie reached into a paint-splattered knapsack for a battered flask. Ewan reached into his jacket pocket and produced a sandwich bag.    
  
“Marmite today, Will. You want one?” he asked, knowing full well…   
  
“Ugh, not for me, pal. Naw way”. Willie was a hater, but for Ewan, the bready, vegetal smell signalled the mid-morning break. It was not yet nine in the morning, but the men had been at work since six to make the most of the daylight at this time of year.   
  
They swung their legs in unison as another train slunk onto the bridge below. It appeared pensive, stuttering onto the bridge and letting out a short, clipped whistle as it slowed further. Even far above the track, the men could hear the grind of the brakes and the clash of steel and iron as it juddered to a halt. The reverberations rose through the fifty-year-old steel and the leg swinging switched to oscillation as the platform shifted and steadied.    
  
“Crikey, is that oor Tam already?” exclaimed Ewan, grabbing the rope to his right and pulling himself upright. “Where’s the bloody tin?”   


Mr Larkin looked up from his newspaper and turned to his left. The window was full of mist. Faint whisps curled like fingers and beckoned through the open section, bringing brine, coal smoke and wet hay into the second-class carriage where they danced with smoked bacon and beef dripping from the dining car behind him. He rustled his newspaper. He sighed. He rustled again and looked ostentatiously at his watch, shooting his cuffs as if all the signalmen, drivers, firemen and even trains of central Scotland could see him. He sighed again and put the paper down.   
  
“Every Wednesday” he exclaimed to a carriage which showed him no interest. A carriage full of raised newspapers, grey hats, grey suits and grey men commuting into the city.   
  
“Hmm?” came the reply. Non-committal, and instantly regretted.   
  
“Every Wednesday, this damned train stops on this damned bridge”   
  
“Oh? Is this the bridge? I wouldn’t want to be painting it today!” came the reply.   
  
“Yes, it’s the bridge. We left North Queensferry at 8:14. It is now 8:17. We are due at Dalmeny at 8:18. Haymarket at 8:33, Waverley at 8:37 and I am due at Messrs Shepherd and Wedderburn at nine. Not a minute later”.   
  
“Hmm…” his reluctant correspondent acknowledged, “I see…”. Newspaper pages turned, tea cups were raised and the catering trolley wheels squeaked into the carriage.   


“Of course, Arbuthnotts have been educated at the College for centuries, but times…can…change”. The somewhat staccato voice of Miriam Arbuthnott rang like a bell above the muted sounds of the first-class carriage. Her son, Jamie, or James if he was in trouble, looked up from the Beano, and out of the window. He sighed, rustled the pages and turned back to Big Eggo. He always found the ostrich spoke more sense than his mother and her friends.   
  
“Anyway, I hope we won’t be late. We seem to be stopping.”   
  
Jamie looked up from his Beano once more and took a bite from the bread and honey his mother had reluctantly purchased for his second breakfast.  Looking around the carriage as he chewed, his eyes rested on an agitated woman peering out of the right-hand window and down towards the navy base.     
  
“Why have we stopped?” she asked the carriage in general. No one responded.    
  
A young man opposite looked up from the orange he was peeling to join her in peering out of the window.   
  
“I wonder what they’re up to down there?” he asked of no one in particular. “It’s HMS Houpetoun now, you know?” he continued. “Not sure what was wrong with HMS Lochinvar, mind you. But that seems to have moved down the coast”.   
  
“That is the nature of ships, my man. I wouldn’t worry about it,” piped up a distinguished older man with a grey moustache from a few seats behind.   
  
“Ships, aye, but mebbe not so much the shore stations,” came the reply. “Something’s afoot – there’s all sorts of new faces in the town. New accents and all. American, Canadian. They’ve not been up this way before. And just look at all the craft down there. That’s more than there’s been in years”   
  
“Ach well. Ours is not to question why, dear boy…”   
  
“What’s this about foreigners in Queensferry, Mr Cameron?” asked the lady opposite him, her nervousness writ large upon her narrow face. “Where have they come from? What are they up to?”   


“Damned if I know, Mrs Dunne. They don’t tell me anything. Something to do with the naval base though, no doubt about it.”   
  
“Goodness – I hope it isn’t bad news. What do we want with a load of Americans and their modern ideas running around Queensferry? We don’t need their jitterbugging and jiving all over the place, I’m sure”.   
  
Cameron chuckled, “Oh I wouldn’t worry, Mrs Dunne. It’ll take a while before the Queensferry hospital mess is that much fun. It’ll take more than a few Sammies in cologne to cover the smell of iodine and bandages. They’re probably just here to spy on housewives and report back to yon General Ike.”   
  
Mrs Dunne’s eyes opened wider, “Spies?!” she whispered, with some alarm, at which point Jamie gave up on Big Eggo altogether.   
  
“I knew it!” he cried out.  
  
“James! Be quiet!” snapped his mother, “don’t interrupt.”   
  
“But Mama, the train guard – he’s got rubber-soled shoes and I’m sure his nose isn’t real, he could be –”   
  
“Oh rubbish. Keep your imagination to yourself” replied Mrs Arbuthnott.  But it was clear that Mrs Dunne’s interest had been piqued.   


In the cab at the front of the train, Tom Dempster wiped his forearm across his brow and stood on the footboard. He relished these brief unscheduled stops high above the Forth. A chance to catch his breath and take in the view – not that there was much to see today.   
  
He peered intently into the gloom anyway, and a small dark spot grew larger until an old paint tin descended from the mist.  Stifling a chuckle, he reaches out a hand behind him, beckoning the driver to join him on the steps down from the cab. Tom reached out to grab the rope and hold it steady, while the driver proffered a bottle, dropping it into the basket and removing a paper parcel. The men made brief eye contact before Tom hopped back into the cab and the engineer released the break, tugging tugs twice on the whistle as the train started to rumble forward once more.   


Tom unwrapped the package, taking a deep breath of bready yeast, ginger and candied orange from the small cake in his hand, to replace the ash and coal smoke he inhabits.  As he breaks off a piece for the driver, a plump sultana falls to join the loose coals on the floor.   


In second class, Mr Larkin looks at his watch for a sixth time as the train lurches into motion again.    


“8:21!” he exclaims. “I simply cannot bear to be late”.  The rubber-soled guard makes his way through the carriage, squeaking slightly.   
  
“Hey! What time for Waverly now, sir?” cries Larkin.   
  
“Oh, we’ll make the time up, sir, the fireman’s a good lad, he’ll be stoking her away the now.”   
  
“Hmm, we’ll see, we’ll see. What’s with all this stepping on the bridge anyhow? It’s every damn Wednesday”   
  
“Oh I don’t think so, sir. Probably something to do with the painters the day”.  
  
Larkin picks up his newspaper to signify the end of his interest in the discussion, even though he knows his attention will be on his watch for the rest of the journey.  The guard, conscious that his expertise is no longer required, continues down the train to first class.   


As the rubber soles squeak their way into his carriage, Jamie looks round and hisses “Look, look!” to his mother. Ignoring him, she continues to muse on the importance of a classical education to her travelling companion.  Jamie, now bored of his magazine, his bread and honey and frankly any diversion from the possibility of on-train espionage, stares intently at the guard as he heads through the carriage.  Mrs Dunne, across the aisle, does the same.  The unlikely spy catchers meet eyes, and Jamie looks away hurriedly, embarrassed to be caught in the act of staring.  With an elaborate lurch of his neck, he pivots to look out of the window as the train starts to pick up speed on the bridge.  With no view to speak of, his attention is caught by the sight of a paint tin – the green neck of a bottle protruding – shooting up out of sight.   
  
“Mother! Look!  A message in a bottle!” he cries.   


“James Arbruthnott that is quite enough!” replies his mother. “Sit there in silence and stop sharing your daydreams with us, otherwise we will simply not be visiting Valvona and Crolla for peppered beef sandwiches after your interview”.   

“But Mama – it was a bottle. I saw it!” he replies, looking towards Mrs Dunne for confirmation. But no one else had seen a thing.   


High above this commotion, Ewan grabs hold of the old paint tin and plucks a bottle of whisky from it.  He hands the basket to Willie who begins to untie the rope.  Cracking the cork, Ewan takes a quick sniff of the golden liquid and is transported back to Perthshire. He smiles wistfully and replaces the cork before stowing the bottle in his kitbag. He turns to Willie who has already tied the rope back to a steel beam and is dipping a new brush into a bucket of red oxide paint.   
  
“Nae a bad life, is it, Wull?” he asks.   
  
“Och could aye be worse, Ewan” the older man replies, “Even better with a drap of that’un in the bothy the night”.   


As the train clatters off the bridge and decelerates into Dalmeny station, Jamie remains staring out of the window. Just below the height of the track – an angle he’d never observed before today – he sees a flat cap and a ladder before a paint-splattered face grins up at him and offers the cheery wave of a tea flask. He starts briefly and again jerks his head round to see if anyone has noticed.   
  
“Ach, that’s Mr Hesketh the foreman, lad,” remarks the guard. The painters are out on the bridge in all weather to keep it looking shipshape,” he explains, extending a closed fist towards Jamie.   
The boy recoils slightly as the guard unfurls his fingers to proffer a single paper-wrapped lemon sherbet, and then recovers to make eye contact with the guard, who lays one finger against the side of his nose and gives a wink before squeaking on down the train.  


Glenturret 10 Years Old Peat Smoked is a smoky oily dram, with the scent of wet hay, smoked mackerel, bacon and dripping, honey, sea breezes and rubber-soled shoes.  On the palate, it gives ash, tinned peaches, sultanas, ginger and candied orange, before ending with charcoal, peppered meats, honey and lemon sherbet.

  
The Forth Bridge opened in 1890 and simply needed a coat of paint every three years to maintain it.  Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that each coat took fifty men approximately three years to apply, meaning it was a never-ending task until 2002 when a new paint – lasting 25 years – was applied for the first time. You can still see the tea bothies of the workmen and night watchmen if you look out to the east and down below track level as the train approaches each of the three diamonds of the bridge.  

Many paintbrushes, rags, coats and caps fell into the water, so a man in a boat was on hand to fish them out during working hours.  My research has not confirmed how many bottles of whisky were exchanged for cake between painters and railway workers, but both jobs would surely prompt quite the appetite.